Business Ethics - Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization - Essay Example

Business of Ethics An organisational leader or the organisation itself will be judged by the success they achieve. Judged in the sense, the leader and his/her organisation will be viewed positively, feted, or in the other hand criticized, avoided etc, etc… by various stakeholders mainly based on the success or the lack of success (failure). In the business world of today, leader’s success is mostly correlated to the organisation’s profits, markets share, etc. That is, leaders will be accepted as successful, only if he/she accomplishes all the above-mentioned material things. Although this perspective cannot be considered wrong at all, the crux is “how” the leader achieves the above mentioned success. Whether, the leader and its organisation including the workers achieve the success through ethical means or through unethical, illegal and fraud means? The main responsibility of a leader is to run the organisation and thereby manage the workers based on preset ethics; otherwise the repercussions for the organisation and the leader will be on unfavourable side. Companies that do not have proper… ethics procedures risk severe damage to their reputation, criminal/legal action and regulatory penalties. The consequences could include loss of customers, reduced share price (Advice on management). To avoid the worst case scenario, and importantly to optimize the functioning of the employees, I have formulated a code of ethics for my business, particularly focusing on the staffs in Marketing, Accounting and Operations. After listing out the codes, the paper will justify the basis of the code from my personal moral standpoint. Finally, the paper will discuss how the set ethics can be incorporated into employees’ functioning, ending with a critique of my formulated ethics code using the ethical theory of Code of Ethics to the employees a) Always function and act with highest standards of sincerity, integrity and without biases, even while following the work culture, and accomplishing the set tasks. b) Follow the work culture, imbibe it in every part of your functioning and help it to evolve into an optimal work culture, without any dissensions. c) Coordinate and cooperate with the fellow workers and thereby foster teamwork, enabling better productivity. d) Involve your fellow employees in the key decision making processes that will impact the entire organizations. However, excuse yourself from making any decisions, when there is a conflict of interest and importantly also disclose in-person or in writing the relevant issues, that explains the circumstances to the head of the audit committee. e) Avoid seeking or accepting any favours from the third parties including clients, which could compromise our decision making process, and could negatively impact our functioning, productivity and importantly ethical image. f) When there is need for recruitment in the particular departments, care should be taken to recruit qualified and equipped employees from diverse backgrounds, without any discriminations. Find out ways to recruit employees from diverse and minority backgrounds, if they fit the job profile and necessities of the job. g) Make efforts to actualize effective communication channels, through which all the employees irrespective of their position in the hierarchy can communicate with one another without any impediments. h) Maintain personal disciple and also try to exhibit that disciple in your professional and social circles, thereby providing positive image to the organization. Personal moral standpoint As leaders are the men/women in lead, they will have a major influence on how the group of employees function and work as part of organizational goals. Typically, leaders have strong assumptions about the nature of the world and the characteristics that make up human nature and relationships (Schein, 1978, 1983). Based on this premises, and because of how important I value ethics, the above mentioned codes will have a positive and encouraging influence on the employees. The code is applicable to any employee in the three departments. Apart from focusing on the personal front, the code stipulates or encourages the employees to focus on the fellow employees and the organisation, so everyone functions optimally. That is, by focusing on teamwork and involved decision making process, the code can lead to cohesion among the employees during each task, which in turn can also make me part of the team, and lead it effectively. The code also covers key instructions regarding financial and non-financial favours, thus preventing any unethical accusations. Thus, from my personal moral standpoint, the code has clear ethical goals and can bring out best ethical and productive behaviour from the employees. Steps to enable the employees to establish a shared ethical position An important step to establish a shared ethical position and thereby provide an optimal working environment is that the leader should mainly get involved in all the ethics code related processes that will take place inside the organization. That is, my role during ethics related processes should not be limited to just ‘overseeing’ the processes, but I need to be an integral part, by optimally following those ethics and also facilitate that those ethics are aptly implemented. An important trait of the leader should be to motivate the employees through his/her actions. So, if I include the ethical codes, as part of my functioning and set an example for the fellow employees, they will be more interested to adopt those codes, leading to shared ethical position. “Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people” (Rockefeller). As I am myself following the codes, it will also allow me to point out any flaws in the employee’s adoption of ethical codes, thereby correcting them quickly and fast tracking the shared ethics formation. To make the employees follow the ethical code of cooperation, coordination and decisions as part of shared ethical position, I should make efforts to should productively involve the employees as part of all the management processes. If the employees are involved as part of team work and are made cooperate, they will come up with valuable suggestions and feedbacks. If the employees, irrespective of their hierarchical position, are asked to contribute, they will elevate their motivation and come up with apt suggestions. In addition, they will work even harder as part of a team to actualize the suggestions, they have given and this way there can be shared ethical position. As specified by the Cooper model, when the workers keep on participating in all the important decision making process, they will start to understand all the intricacies of organization functioning. (Scott 2002). Likewise, if I actualize a barrier free communication channels for all the employees to air their views, then also shared ethics position can be achieved. Leaders and managers should realize that effectively conveying and receiving information through communications (internal and external) increases substantially the performance of the employees and the organization. (McNamara). . Ethical theory and critiquing the code Crane & Matten (2007) suggest that ethical theory is a useful lens through which we can view & focus upon ethical issues – each theory offering a different perspective. When this formulated code is analyzed through the stakeholder theory, there appears both correlation as well as discord. Correlation in the sense, the code focuses on giving importance to every employee, thereby making them, part of all the processes, and on the same lines, the stakeholders theory clearly implies that all employees must be treated equally and productively involved, irrespective of their position in the hierarchy. “In essence, the theory considers the firm as an input-output model by explicitly adding all interest groups particularly employees as part of corporate mix and functioning.” (Fernando 2009, p.37). Although, the stakeholder theory toes with the ethical practice of involving the employees, it could have problems during applications in an organisational environment because all the involved employees could not contribute optimally, as there could be gaps in the skills and aptitude level. Likewise, there is a possibility that each employee come up with their own suggestions, which may favour their side, thus there could be difficulty in forming consensus, leading to problems to the management References Advice on management, Famous advice on Ethics, viewed on October 22, 2010 http://www.adviceonmanagement.com/advice_ethics.html Crane, A and Matten, D 2007, Business Ethics: Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization, Oxford University Press. Fernando, AC 2009, Business Ethics, Pearson Education India McNamara, C., Basics in Internal Organizational Communications, viewed on October 22, 2010 http://www.managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm, Rockefeller, J. D. 1996, Humanistic Management by Teamwork, Edited by Baldwin, D. A. Libraries Unlimited Schein, E. H. 1978, Career dynamics: Matching individual and organizational needs, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Schein, E. H. 1983, The role of the founder in creating organizational culture. Organizational Dynamics, Summer, 13–28. Scott, R. J., 2002, Ethical Decision-Making: The Link Between Ambiguity and Accountability, Cooper’s Ethical Decision-Making Models, viewed on October 22, 2010 http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/scott.html Read More